So blog... I've been a really bad blogger. I'm also resorting to texting blog posts because now that school is out I am computer-less! I think today will be the day I finally buy a new power cord to replace my dog chewed cord for my laptop and I'll be back in business. I may even clear my old pictures from my hard drive so that I have space to upload the new ones. Hell I may even update facebook photos.

So today is the first day of my new weight watchers lifestyle ( their words not mine). Let's hope this goes well. Especially considering Christmas is right around the corner! If I can make it through the holiday and lose two pounds I can do anything.

So today's plans include cleaning my house, hanging Christmas lights and mailing Christmas cards ( I mean it's not the 21st of December or anything!) I'm also excited to throw in a trip to the salon for a fresh ( I despise using that word bc my husband loves it so much) cut and color. Yay!

Merry 4 days until Christmas!

Bo's 21st and NCSU Homecoming!

We had a great time celebrating Bo's birthday over the weekend at the NCSU tailgate. All of the food I prepared was delicious and we had soooo much leftover. I was excited to catch up with so many people that I hadn't seen since college. I completely forget to take pictures, but stole a bunch from my Mom's camera.

Yum Yum Pasta

This pasta is SOOOO good and SOOOO easy! The only thing it's missing is the healthy part... oh well!

I add mushrooms to mine just because I like em! I also used whole wheat penne and about 3 tablespoons of flour because the sauce just wouldn't thicken.

Creamy Chicken Penne

Rated: Submitted By: Taste of Home Prep Time: 20 Minutes Ready In: 35 Minutes Servings: 4

"This quick-to-fix pasta dish has all the right ingredients to become a family favorite - chicken, pasta and a flavorful sauce that gets its velvety richness from cream cheese. Reduced-fat cream cheese could be used."

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups penne pasta, uncooked 3/4 pound boneless, skinless chicken breasts, thinly sliced 1/2 cup chopped onions 1 tablespoon olive oil 1 (6 ounce) package snow peas 1 small red pepper, chopped 2 teaspoons minced garlic

2 tablespoons butter 1 tablespoon flour 1 1/2 cups milk 4 ounces PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese, cubed 1/2 cup DIGIORNO Grated Romano Cheese 1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh parsley

DIRECTIONS:

1.	Cook pasta as directed on package. Meanwhile, cook chicken and onions in hot oil in large skillet for 6-8 min. or until chicken is done, stirring frequently. Add snow peas, red peppers and garlic; cook and stir 1 min. Remove from heat; cover to keep warm.
2.	Melt butter in medium saucepan. Stir in flour until well blended. Gradually stir in milk. Bring to boil; cook on medium heat 2 min. or until thickened, stirring constantly. Add cream cheese, grated cheese, salt and black pepper; cook 1-2 min. or until cream cheese is completely melted and sauce is well blended, stirring constantly.
3.	Drain pasta; place in large bowl. Add chicken mixture and sauce; toss to coat. Top with parsley.

NCSU Homecoming!

Yay! I'm just so excited about homecoming this weekend. NC State is playing Wake Forest in the "family bowl" (both of my sisters when to Wake Forest). My whole family is tailgating together to celebrate my sister recently turning 21. We've planned a yummy menu centered around various dips. Here's our tailgate menu:

Hot Dips

• Rotel's Sausage Dip (a Sadow family favorite)
• Spinach and Artichoke Dip (a new one from food network)
• Buffalo Chicken Dip (borrowed from Miss Mary Clare)

Cold Dips

• Yummy Dip ( I don't know what its called but I got it from Jennifer and its yummy!)
• Veggie Dip
• Hummus (recipe from The Food Network 50 Tailgating Dips)

Hot Stuff

• Tailgate Casserole (a new one from this random website)
• Meatballs (a Keske (my Mom's fam) family tradition)  

Lots of pictures and reviews to come! Have a safe & fun weekend!

First Baby Purchase!

So no, we're not pregnant... yet, but I'm still going crazy looking at cute baby things. One of my requests has always been an antique high chair. I would definitely forgo the convinence of a highly functional plastic-y modern high chair for the look of a wooden antique that would fit in well with our decor. I've put off buying anything baby related until we see that + sign until today.


Now, here is how my no baby things rule was broken. The other night, I was over at my parents house and my mom and I were talking about baby things. I told that I wanted the rocking chair that is in the guest room at my parent's house to put in a nursery. The rocking chair is the one that my mom rocked all of her babies in and I would love to have it. I knew she had used it for all of us but didn't know how it came to be a part of our nurseries. I learned that when my Grandma would ask my Mom when she was having children, she would reply, "when you see a rocking chair in my house". So my Grandma went out and bought my Mom a rocking chair. I was born shortly after. 


After telling me this story my Mom said to me that she ought to buy me a high chair in hopes it would work like the rocking chair did. The following day, my good friend Lauren (who is awesome at antiquing. We share many emails back and forth from our desks at work with links to various craiglist items) sent me an email with a link to the most adorable dark walnut stained high chair and it was a steal! Only $50! I quickly forwarded it my Mom who loved it and decided that it should be ours. Not wanting to jinx our luck, my Mom is planning at keeping it at her house until we are sure a baby is on the way! Look at this adorable little thing! I can't wait until I have something adorable to put in it! 

Redecorating!

So I've been itching to redecorate recently. I'd like to incorporate more antiques and vintage items in my "pottery barn-esque" style of decorating. I'd decided to work on the foyer and the dining room.

Our foyer is grey and small and has horrible lighting (love the environment, hate the way the energy saving lightbulbs look. My wonderful handy husband recently titled the floors for me and his latest project is adding picture frame molding underneath the chair rail. I love how its coming together. My problem is decorating the rest of the room. We inherted this picture from my mother in law and while I love the picture, I'm not sure if I love it there. Any suggestions? Also, I'm not sure if I want to paint the lower half white or leave it grey and keep the picture molding white.

A few looks I like...
 
Image via Worthington Mill Work

We're also planning on doing the same thing to the dining room. I'm thinking of repainted the dining room also. The colors didn't turn out the exact way I wanted.

So here we are

I've just realized its been o almost two months since the last blog post.

Show Us Your Life- Living Room

So a blog that I read, Kelly's Korner, asked readers to show pictures of their living rooms. I loved the idea and spent a few hours going through all of the readers posts. My favorite decorating ideas come from other people so I've had fun looking through everyone's living rooms.

Here are a few pictures of ours from renovation phase until now. We bought our house in March of 2009. It was built in 1968 and had not really been updated since. My requirement was that the house had a basement to hold our man cave and serve as a playroom for our future kids. We've made lots of renovations and I'm proud of how far we've come! We still have a LONG way to go to make this house where we want it but we're working on it :)

First few days in the house, we got the room painted and then used it as a staging area for all the renovation supplies

Got the furniture arranged but needed to find a media cabinet. You can see storage in the back right corner too!

My fab craigslist find! Only $100

This is the view from the foyer into the living room.  I love our huge window in the front. I keep debating on putting up window treatments... I love the afternoon sunshine and we don't use this room ever so privacy isn't a concern. This is sort of what it looks like now, except we've added artwork and I change the theme around with the season. My goal this weekend is to get the shells down and start getting fall decorations up!

This is our front entry way. We recently put in tile but I don't have any updated pictures. If you walk in the front door and turn to your right you are in the living room.

Egg and Spinach Muffins

I heard about this recipe from my Sarah, my hairdresser. Sarah always has yummy good for you recipes to share with me!

Egg and Spinach Muffins
(I add mushrooms too!)

Wonderful Weekends

Now that school has started, I long for weekends. My favorite part is being lazy. Unfortunately there was none of that this weekend.

Friday concluded by meeting up with girlfriends + Jay at Monterrey for Mexican in our PJs. I'm so thankful to have friends that I can completely be myself around. We enjoyed sipping monster margaritas (who we blame for the terrible Saturday headaches) in our t-shirts, pj pants, and ponytails. We polished off the carefree night with a little vino and watching football while cuddled up on couches in the basement.

Saturday was a marathon of football games. I was at the field from 12:30-8pm with my cheerleading squads. Saturday night was the Wolfpack away game. Jay and I woke up early on Saturday, worked out and began preparing for game day. We made spaghetti, sausage dip, and cut up veggies for our guests to much on later in the evening. As you probably know, I do not get things done ahead of time. This Saturday meal prep was extremely uncharacteristic of my procrastinator self! Luckily I was "rewarded" by doing things ahead of time as the football games ran way overtime and my guests arrive before I did. Thanks to Jay the food was heated and ready to be served upon my arrival. We enjoyed spending time watching the game with Mary Clare, her new boyfriend Casey, and Jennifer and Brian. The five of us Wolfpackers enjoyed the victory and laughed until our sides hurt from telling college stories :) We had a great time reminiscing.

On Sunday I had my first experience with Pure Barre. Whew! This workout is supposed to change my body in only 10 sessions... I'll let you know how that goes! Jay and I both got to enjoy family time on Sunday. I participated in family workout with my mom and Allie. We had a blast winning all the races and enjoyed making a mess with flour. Upon clean-up, I met Jay and his mom and aunt Vic at the lake for an afternoon of sun, and house viewing (more like dreaming about my life in a lakeside mansion). Funny glitch with the lake- I was supposed to call Jay when I left the house and for some reason, recently I've been leaving my cellphone behind. Sunday was no exception. I had to stop and scrounge for change to use the pay phone at a gas station on south blvd. Lovely. The phone didn't even work and it took my last $.50 (who knew it cost $.50 to make a phone call!!!) I continued out to the lake and a nice kayaking couple let me use their phone to call Jay.

Playing Catch Up (again)

Hopefully this will be the last "catch up" post and that I will be a good little blogger from here on out. My goal is to keep this blog current by posting at least once a week! Here goes nothing!

September 8th marked our 3rd anniversary! I cannot believe it has been that long. We've been together for 7 years! We celebrated in the usual fashion of takeout Chinese food (moo goo gai pan for me and sesame chicken for Jay) and cake. Although we didn't get to eat our wedding cake, a neighbor's mother's pound cake was pretty delicious. Overall the night was uneventful as we dined and watched TV, but it's comforting knowing how happy we both are and where our lives have taken us. We may not be as rich or as successful in our careers as we would have wished by now but we are so very happy and thankful.

Happy for our home, for each other, for our animal babies, for parents who love and care about us, for God and our church, for everything we have been blessed with. I'm so thankful to have a husband who loves me so much and is never afraid to show his affection. Jay, you always take care of me and our home and I'm so fortunate to have you in my life. Happy anniversary!

Here are a few pictures of the last 7 years together.

This is our first picture together. Taken in September of 2003 at my room in University Towers our freshman year! Notice that my shirt says center of the universe. Go ahead and laugh!

At SeaWorld in March of 2004 for freshman year Spring Break.

Back to School Bash. August 2004. What was I wearing?!

March of 2005. Arriving in Mexico for our sophomore year Spring Break!

Junior year Back to School Bash. August 2005.

October 2005. Celebrating our "third" anniversary in Williamsburg, VA. 

Winterbreak in Snowshoe, WV. January 2006.

Somewhere in the Carribean. Junior year Spring Break. March 2006. 

The night we got engaged! October 1st 2006.

New Years Eve in Florida for the Orange Bowl! December 2006.

July 2nd 2007. Bringing home our first baby!

College Graduation. May 2007.

Vegas for my 23rd birthday. November 2007.

Spring Break in Philadelphia. April 2008.

1st Anniversary in Mexico. September 2008. Not the best picture but you get the point :)

March 30th 2009. Bought our first home and construction begins!

Celebrating our 2nd anniversary rafting on the Nantahala River. September 2009.

2nd anniversary trip to Yelapa, Mexico. November 2009.

Rome. June 2010.

Amalfi, Italy. June 2009.

Whew! After looking through so many years of great memories I am even more thankful for everything I have been given. 

Pops In the Park

On Sunday night we met packed a picnic friends at Symphony Park @ Southpark mall to hear "music for lovers" performed by the Charlotte Symphony. This is one of our favorite summertime activities. The summer series is in danger of closing due to lack of funding. Click here to donate!

Mary Clare and Me

Mary Clare, Kathryn, & Me & a beautiful sunset

This humidity is definitely getting to me!

More Things That Make Me Happy

I'm just feeling very happy these days. More happy posts to come. Feel free to laugh at my sources of happiness as my sister already had a laughing fit looking through my camera and asking why I would take pictures of my refrigerator!

1. Grocery shopping with my neela bags. So cute!

From 2010-06-25

2. Fresh fruits, veggies, and bread from the farmer's market

From 2010-06-25

3. Eating healthy stuff. Chicken breast with arugula, tomato, and goat cheese salad. yum.

From 2010-06-25

4. All of my hundreds of dollars worth of tupperware filled to the brim with fresh food.

From 2010-06-25

Things That Make Me Happy

I've been sooo bummed out recently with all things graduate school related so on Thursday I decided to dedicate the weekend to sneaking in time to do things that make me happy, try to balance out the stuff I don't enjoy with the things that I do!

1. Buy fun NC STATE RED picnic basket for romantic lake dinner date with the husband.

From 2010-06-25

2. Be too lazy to cook a gourmet picnic for wonderful lake date with husband, so head to dean and deluca instead!

From 2010-06-23

3. Amazing Bottle of Prosecco

From 2010-06-23

4. One hot husband

From 2010-06-23

5. Beautiful Sunset

From 2010-06-23

6. Enjoy!

From 2010-06-23

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From 2010-06-23

From 2010-06-23

From 2010-06-23

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From 2010-06-23